In May of 1984, my friend had gotten himself a job managing a PediCab company down on Granville Island, and his new employer needed riders.

The job would be to drive tourists on three-wheeled bicycle tours around Granville Island and False Creek for about 6 bucks an hour. The owner (whom I’ll call Ron) had seen that Vancouver’s tourism market would be exploding with Expo 86 in the next couple of years. There was no competition for his wheeled tour business in False Creek, and it seemed like a novel and fun business for a young person to be in. My friend Kuan convinced a few of us to visit Ron’s apartment with him. We met Ron and his girlfriend, learned more about the PediCab company, and all got hired. Other than having a paper route when I was sixteen, I hadn’t had any paying jobs. I was a bit nervous, but also excited about the prospect.

Throughout May, the spring weather was up and down, varying between dry and hot, and cold and wet. Me and my best friend Doug took the bus down to Granville Island every day, and would meet Kuan at the little eight by ten wooden shed where the PediCab bikes were stored. The bikes were three-speed Norco tricycles that had plywood carriagies built onto the back. They looked like wheeled rickshaws, and I wondered how much weight they could hold, how hard it would be to drive them, and if the bike’s chain or brakes would actually hold out.

Doug and I would take our bikes out around the island trying to get people to take tours with us for two or three dollars. What I remember most in those first few weeks before the tourist season started was the lack of tourists on the island, and the abundance of spring rain. Jesus, sitting in my forest green rain poncho with nobody around, I really began to regret my decision.

After a week or two, the weather dried up and we had the beginnings of a bright hot summer. By June, we had a full compliment of five riders for four bikes (some people only rode one or two shifts per week) . Everybody was getting tourists to ride, and getting some tips!

Sometimes Kuan’s ego, drive, and bossiness would come out when he felt pressure. His sense of self-importance would go to his head and he’d be difficult to be around. I found that out when one of our riders told me that he’d called one of our younger riders inferior right to their face. Little power trips like that are a shame, but most people outgrow that sort of tightly-wound behaviour.

By contrast, the company’s owner, Ron, was laid back and light-hearted most of the time. He was about 25 at the time and became a friend and even like a big brother to me. He seemed to enjoy the company of younger people, taking a few of us out for beers and eightball at a local pub, or out for lunch somewhere. Maybe being around younger people made him feel good. He was a great boss for a bunch of young folks who were enjoying a fun, casual summer job.

We discovered that the brick paving stones and railroad tracks of Granville island made for a pretty shaky and wobbly ride. It could be pretty exciting to have to swerve around a car that suddenly decided to back out. We had bright orange whip flags and loud “ah-oogah” bike horns, but Granville Island during tourist season was always a bit risky for cyclists and pedestrians (and still is). I got cursed-out by a taxicab driver who slowed down just to tell me “I hate you fucking guys!” Some people…

Chariots of Ire

A couple of my favourite memories from this first summer season of Pedi-cabbing:

A pair of limo drivers had gotten the night off and had been drinking a fair bit and were in very good spirits. There was one big, fat quiet guy, and one short, mouthy guy. They wanted to know how fast we could ride our bikes, and they wanted to wager on it because of course they did. The short, mouthy one told us that whoever could get from The Granville Island Hotel at the east end of the island to Bridges Restaurant at the west end first would get an extra twenty bucks. The big fat limo driver got into Doug’s cab, and I ended up with the small, loud-mouthed guy. I also had a distinct advantage over Doug in that we both knew his bike was stuck in third gear, so it would take him longer to get up to speed. Hey, a fare’s a fare.

As we took off from the Granville Island Hotel parking lot, we started picking up speed. Without traffic, it’d be about a two or three minute run, but this was a busy Saturday night with cars and pedestrians all over the street. Visibility was a concern.

At about a third of the way towards Bridges, we were more or less neck-and-neck. A kindly Commissionaire named Glenn waved at us as he always did, looking official and navy-like in his black uniform and white captain’s hat. Doug and I had always greeted him with “Hello Sir!” and he’d always smile and wave back. We were good kids. This time when Doug said “Hello Sir!”, my passenger, the little guy, said “What are you, some kinda cop? You’re no fucking cop!” and I watched Glenn’s face drop. I guess maybe Limo drivers take shit from their passengers and feel a need to give some back, but that was just plain rude.

I pulled away with Mr. Mouthy still hooting obscenities back to his workmate, while poor Doug strained along in third gear and lost ground, hauling his larger, loudly laughing passenger. We all landed safely at Bridges, and my mouthy guy paid up. In the following days, I’m sure I tried to repair our relationship with the Commissionaires the next time we saw old Glenn.

Jack and Foth

My next favourite memory was giving the TV newsman Jack Webster a ride down the boardwalk behind the Granville Island Hotel. He had a cameraman with him to tape a little intro piece about Granville Island for his “Webster!” morning talkshow on BCTV. I had to ride slowly along the narrow boardwalk a couple of times while the cameraman walked backwards shooting Jack. (By god, those cameramen are talented individuals.)

Jack was having fun, and after they finished taping their little promo piece, Jack didn’t want to get off. He asked me to roll him up behind the hotel a ways further. As we approached the back of the Granville Island Hotel, I heard a man’s voice yelling out from the outdoor patio:”Hey Webster, you old sunnuvabitch, what are you doing here?” It was Alan Fotheringham, another famous journalist near Webster’s vintage, giving his old pal a hard time. Webster called back and told him to mind his own damned business or something, and they shared a laugh. So far, I’ve not been able to find that footage from the old Webster program, but am still looking around for it online.

One day, one of our riders named Jennifer had to abandon a fare when the frame of her bike sheared almost in two from the weight. Jennifer was fine, but upset and exhausted from having to walk her bike back to the shed. We’d figured that two adults, one rider, and groceries could easily weigh up to 500 pounds, and the original bike frames and forks were not designed for that much load. They were really designed for half that much, like one little grandmother on the front and a light basket of groceries on the back. So, the owner Ron had all the frames reinforced with steel tubing, and all the forks and wheels replaced with mountain bike parts and motorcycle-grade wheel spokes. The bikes never broke again after that.

Falling Hard

I fell pretty hard for another pedicab rider (whom I’ll call Lynette) and we started a brief, passionate summer fling. She was really the first girl in years who’d demonstrated an attraction to me. My attraction to her felt intoxicating and dizzying. After that summer job was over, we stayed in touch and I remained deeply smitten with her for well over a year afterwards, even after she began dating Kuan. Yep, when fall came, she dated Kuan in University, while occasionally visiting me on the side. Kuan never found out as far as I know. It was all a little bit covert and messy. I guess Lynette just wanted to kind of have it all. I was just glad to be in there somewhere.

My freindship with Lynette died off later in the year after she told me that she thought we were too different. “It will never work” because, as she told me, “you’re going into Arts and I’m going into Commerce”. That was hard to take and I knew that explanation was more or less a brush-off using the weak metaphor of post-secondary education. It was her young attempt to untangle herself. I’d felt my feelings very intensely at the time. Up to that point I’d experienced very little passionate love and had never dated anyone, so I took my feelings for her quite seriously – almost to the edge of obsession. Being eighteen, I really didn’t know what I wanted – except that my life was a mess, and I wanted to be loved.

In practical terms, it was just a raw, immature, and sometimes physical affair, but for me it was also about those moments when I had her undivided attention, and when we were physically close. I’ve since discovered that I do have some attachment issues. I probably assigned a little too much emotional significance to my first real experience with young lust and passion.

All the same, I really don’t want to do a disservice to her. She was important to me, but we were still practically kids though: When we met, I was eighteen and she was nineteen and would be starting her second year at UBC in the fall. All I knew was that I was nuts about her and there was nobody else like her in my life. But I was also still struggling with all my parental issues, big uncertainty about my future, and tons of family baggage to lug around (yet to be unpacked).

All those good and bad feelings were part of my makeup; they were my bitter little chords. Early on, life had given me intense loss, fear, and insecurity, so my way of being attached to someone else was probably raw, intense, and fairly insecure.

I can easily look back on Lynette as a kind, loving, and intelligent girl who saw things in me that I couldn’t see in myself at the time. Our summer fling and friendship taught me a lot about love, obsession, what I wanted, and how far I still needed to go in developing my life’s path.

Young infatuations are not meant to last or be meaningful or serious, but I think that I was looking for all those things with Lynette, but probably a bit too young and a bit too soon. I can look back now and see our relationship clearly as the sweet flailing passions of two young people with different family backgrounds, values, and ambitions. I can also look back with gratitude for the friendship that we shared. She did show me in little gestures and small moments that she cared for me more than just a fling, and in the brief time we spent together, laughing, talking, and making out, she made me feel special, valued, and strong.